


enlighten me

by insistentbass



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insistentbass/pseuds/insistentbass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Languid early morning sun filters through the small gap in John’s curtains, as he awakes; blurred; foggy, to the sound of metal on flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	enlighten me

Languid early morning sun filters through the small gap in John’s curtains, as he awakes; blurred; foggy, to the sound of metal on flesh.  
  
That’s never good, really, especially not at - John reaches a blind hand out, lets his eyes fuzz back into focus as the neon infiltrates his vision - _great_ , five-thirty am. Several things stop him from instinctively grabbing the gun hidden beneath his pillow:  
  
It’s the sound of _soft_ flesh; no bone nor scream from victim, no sickeningly silent snapping of tendon, muscle, a kind of _fwwap_ slice, squidgy, fat. The rancid stink whispering under the gap in his bedroom door is long dead; sort of bitter and yet definitely full of blood, fresh, then. And perhaps the most conclusive -  
  
Each swipe and loud meeting of weapon to meat is accompanied by the small, breathy grunts of Sherlock. _Rude sounding_ , John would think, if he weren’t clinging to the last bits of sleep and irked by the mental image of something dead and inevitably seeping onto the kitchen table. No toast, then, but definitely tea (always tea).  
  
“One day we’ll actually use this table to _eat_ ” John greets him, sliding himself carefully passed Sherlock’s awkwardly bent  body that’s blocking the necessary path from fridge and milk, to kettle and more.  
  
“Highly improbable. Besides, this is food, of sorts”  
  
“Um, no. No that’s _really not_ food, Sherlock. Definitely not now you’ve- what, _actually,_ are you doing to that thing?”  
  
John flips the kettle on and leans back against the counter to survey the area (danger zone), littered with numerous half-gone experiments, empty mugs, acids, and most profoundly; a neatly arranged line of severed animal - _thighs?_ \- pig, cow, possibly goat. The fact that John now recognises these sorts of things kind of puts him off the tea, but he cradles it for something to do other than retch and look utterly disapproving of the whole thing.  
  
“It would be too complicated to explain”  
  
John snorts. Sherlock exhales, straightens and meets his eyes. There’s dried blood on his perfectly Monday-grey shirt, which is nothing new, not even for six am. John wonders how it’s possible to be in such a mess and so completely _together_ at the same time, and briefly follows Sherlock’s gaze, a drag of eyes across his own torso that says; unwashed, unshaven, undressed, _underwhelming_.  
  
“I’m lacerating the flesh of several species of farm animal, deceased for twenty-eight to forty-eight hours, in order to catalogue the different consistencies of coagulation and tissue damage, do feel free to look, John, the results are mediocre but scientifically interesting nevertheless -“  
  
And John does look, god knows why, but he looks and the combination of coppery flesh filling his nostrils and clumpy areas of half-dry blood collecting between wounds, this time, _does_ put him off his tea. He waves his hand to stop Sherlock, mid-science lecture, before he hurls or _worse_ , begins to seriously consider locking his bedroom door at night.  
  
Purely for a change of conversation - Sherlock never asks him about his plans for the day and, _hah,_ really doesn’t care when John humours himself - he announces his visit to Harry’s, to help the move to her new (one person) flat.  
  
“It’s only for a couple of days, don’t _really_ fancy it but, yeah, I did say I’d help out, so”  
  
John doesn’t get a reply, unsurprisingly, so he settles into his armchair and busies himself with the newspaper, flicks through pages of nothing, something about fraud, and a bunch more of nothing. It’s not for another good half an hour that Sherlock moves from the kitchen and decides he has time enough to feign interest, checks himself out in the mirror looking for stray splatters of blood - fixing his hair, more likely, and John jumps on the chance to chastise him for his obvious vanity.  
  
“You look _mighty_ pretty today, Sherly.” Says high pitched!John, raises an eyebrow and adds a smirk for extra piss-taking effect. “Stop faffing around you big ponce.”  
  
So Sherlock stops faffing, turns his heel and pretty much throws himself into the chair opposite. There’s something on Sherlock’s face that indicates several degrees of annoyance are about to be felt on John’s part; he can tell that even with his eyes fixed to the rubbish news headlines, feel it burn through the thin paper and splodged ink.  
  
He flicks the paper down -  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
John patiently rolls his lips as Sherlock takes his sweet time to answer, resists the ultimate urge to tap his foot. Those ever steepled fingers taunt him, poised under such a sharp chin that John often thinks about running his knuckles along it, roughing his cheek against it -  
  
“Enlighten me as to why ordinary people feel the need to perform certain duties, despite not actively wanting to, in order to please someone else, namely a relative”  
  
Oh good lord, not this again. For the past few cases there have been constant questions and reassurances - _Sentiment? Yes. Good? Bit not_. - and Sherlock is worse than a five year old inquiring about the nature of the universe, or Santa; tiresome, to say the least.  
  
It’s going to be a long one, so John folds his paper neatly and sets it to one side, takes a long and needed gulp of tea before answering. And he _would_ mind it, really be irritated, if it weren’t from Sherlock, if it weren’t from such genuinely inquisitive glassy eyes, and if he weren’t so naturally and _sadly_ lacking understanding in some of the most basic _human_ things.  
  
Sometimes, it’s almost a pleasure, to teach.  
  
“Sherlock, people do things because, well, sometimes pleasing someone else is worth - hmm, for example, suffering a few days in the company of your recovering alcoholic sister. It’s-“  
  
“Sentimental?”  
  
“Well, yeah, that. But, also caring for someone, doing something purely selfless, I suppose, feels good-“  
  
“It’s not selfless if it feels good, John.”  
  
 _Christ_ , he’s annoyingly right, but then again Sherlock’s always right, even in the things where he’s wrong. John licks his lip steadily, searches for something concrete, something solid in the sea of constantly moving crap that is human emotion. And how, really, do you explain feelings to someone who professes not to have them? Despite words; they’re not enough, never.  
  
“Okay, I’ll give you that one. It’s about caring for another person, truly caring for someone, even if you can’t stand the sight of them sometimes, you know? Well, maybe not, but there it is. That’s the sum of it, really.”  
  
Possibly the worst explanation of anything _ever_ , but Sherlock at least seems to be mulling it over, turning the pages of his well versed brain. Except -  
  
“No, I still don’t see it”  
  
John sighs, scrubs his face with two slightly clammy hands; sits forward in his seat in some hope that proximity will magically merge their brainwaves together in some mind melding Spock type shit. Doesn’t work.  
  
“Is there no one, have you - have you never, just _completely_ cared for someone, so much that- what about Mycroft? -”  
  
(The eyebrow says it all, really.)  
  
John nods in concordance, possibly the stupidest thing he’s ever suggested.  
  
“No, well okay, I get that. Is there no one that you care for so much that you’d - you’d do anything even if it meant going against what you want, even if it hurts you?”  
  
An interval of static silence passes, where John inhales more tea with the mingled relief and pride of having rendered Sherlock quiet for a few seconds, and Sherlock roves through the corridors of his mind.  
  
“Clarify _anything_ ”  
  
Sherlock says - no, _breathes,_ actually - has his elbows tight on his knees, dart eyes needled in on John’s; as if trying to steal the feeling from his pupils, suck the taste of it from the air between them. John itches his own knee, for something to do, in some effort to aid his quest in explaining something that’s near unexplainable.  
  
“You’d - you’d die for them,” He stumbles, instantly regrets it because, _suddenly_ , blood and flesh and metal; all the morning sounds he had awoken to, suddenly they all merge with the soft of Sherlock’s curls, death in the blue of his eyes instead of staining his shirt; emptiness, acres of it -  
  
“Bit dramatic, John,” Sherlock cuts in, slices through the torrential beating of John’s suddenly racing heart. “But, yes.”  
  
There’s hesitation because, wait, did Sherlock just really say that? An admittance of something so significantly epic, so undeniably _sentimental_ and, well, John wonders, instantly - _hopes_ , maybe, knows that he’s being ridiculous.  
  
“Well then, that’s good - yeah, good. So that’s why I have to go to my sister’s even…”  
  
But the rest gets lost, swallowed by the almost vacant hollows in Sherlock’s skin, bone, like he’s away somewhere far and is clawing his way back terribly slowly. John wants to ask - _are you okay_ \- because he's only ever seen a look close to that on Sherlock in the throes of nicotine withdrawal, but there’s something in the pitch of the man's breathing that begs for silence.  
  
“You, John.”  
  
John shifts in his seat; rubs at his chin, then his knee again, crosses his arms over his chest and exhales an _almost_ believable laugh. And he’s squirming, feels intensely on the spot even though Sherlock is the one admitting universal truths.   
  
“Sorry, what?”  
  
When Sherlock flicks his eyes from mid roam to look at him, this time, there’s no annoyance, no misunderstanding or confusion, or lack of human judgement. There’s just - space. Times and times of it, gravitational, and John is caught in orbit, drifting somewhere in the in between.  
  
John hadn’t really been asking _sorry, what?_ but rather trying to wing himself some time to absorb that little nuance of information, to filter. Sherlock gathers that, obviously, as he pushes himself up out of the armchair fluidly, neatly rolls his fallen shirt sleeve back up to his elbow, spans his hands on either side of his hips, defiant.  
  
“And what do people do, Doctor, to cope with such a weakness?”  
  
To his credit, John doesn’t leap up and flee the scene like he so desperately wants to; instead he flexes the palms of his hands against the arms of the chair, feels the sweat collecting at the base of his spine, _doctor_ , breathes through his nose because he doesn’t quite trust himself to open his mouth.  
  
Sherlock ghosts - as he is so apt at doing - closer to him, squeezes as much dark into his eyes as is possible; a predatory stance, poised, ready, and John feels under scrutiny that he is actually used to, but somehow tastes a little more _dangerous_. Maybe, now, someone will push too far.  
  
John, on all accounts, has been waiting for it, but shamefully is not prepared.  
  
“You shot the cabbie, John”  
  
Which is a thing all in itself, isn’t it? John’s quite aware, has been _painfully_ aware of the opacity of such an act - how it had been different, _really different_ ; right from the sharp focus of eye on target, to the flat punch of hammer against bullet as it had left the muzzle of his gun. And he had been so sure, then, that nothing but that action was right in his head, or in anything.  
  
Jesus, all John wants is his tea and some breakfast and to break away from this - a backlash of _why_ and _what did it all mean?_ , of Sherlock existing incredibly close to him, touching knees with his own, and yet really not close enough at all - and fucking hell, it’s 6am in the morning. This isn’t the time, there is _never_ a time, not yet, not for this, surely.  
  
“Yeah, I did do that, didn’t I?” John’s asks but doesn’t, shifts his gaze finally away from Sherlock’s hip holstered hands, sharpens himself back into the reality of the man’s face. “Sherlock, I’d do it again.”  
  
That’s not such a revelation, he knows, more a confirmation of things already in plain sight, and by the unwavering steady of Sherlock’s eyes, he is nonplussed by old information. That, or he simply happens to be a not-so-secret mind reader as well as a genius, and can predict John’s words before they’re even born in his own head, before the neurons and pathways even correlate themselves. Wouldn’t be a shocker.  
  
“Yes” Sherlock confirms, moves, always moving, inches closer, to better size up John’s reaction or better look into his actual soul, he doesn’t know. All John _does_ know is the elastic heat pulling at the air, the coiled up tension of his all-knowing gut and the scrape of his own breath against the walls of his throat.  
  
John just wishes Sherlock would touch him, slight and tender, to the cheek or the back of his neck or even the bridge of his nose. There needs to be reassurance, somewhere; that these moments live in this dimension, in Baker Street, London - not some alternate ethereal, _unreachable_ , nowhere.  
  
The dip of Sherlock’s philtrum, pressed to own mouth, is so palpable, though, so utterly smothering, that nothing else but this can possibly be real.  
  
Cars outside protest, the creaking ache of a handbrake penetrates through the slightly open window behind Sherlock’s delicately lined body. He angles it, just perfectly, so that John is faced with a halo of light, a washed out background, and all his vision consumes is the dark tall shadow of Sherlock, pressing into him despite the barely-there touch of knees.  
  
Sherlock asks;   
  
“Would you allow me, John. Would you allow me to die for you?”  
  
And John isn’t exactly sure what he says after that, isn’t certain about what transpires afterwards; how he finds his tongue on the roof of Sherlock’s mouth, or his pores trembling with so much want that he can barely remember how to work his hands through clumsy shirt buttons. One thing, a tiny galaxy of afterthought, sieves through as teeth mark him and the edge of the bookshelf cuts into his back -  
  
There is no doubt that soon, he will be alone.

  


  



End file.
